Does anyone blend different roast levels of an SO? - Page 2

[Martin]

My melange is your uneven roast.
Martin

[Abdon]

Exactly, and how you approach the roast is going to shape the flavor development. If you ramp up rapidly, then slow the roast; or ramp up slowly hold a certain temperature; or ramp up slowly, finish quickly, etc.

Roast profiling the beans can give you many different approaches to developing the flavors in the beans. While there may be one "best" roast profile for a certain bean; other bean types may successfully take multiple roast profiles giving different flavors. It then becomes the roaster's choice that several roast profiles for the same bean and blending the roasts gives a better overall flavor than a single roast level. In effect, this is using a single origin to create a blend instead of multiple bean varieties - and this approach is not endemically counterproductive in every case.

My point being, the graph illustrates only one flavor case and cannot be applied ubiquitously as a universal, simple answer for every bean.

This year sweet marias has been selling a fascinating Ethiopian Harrar. Not a balanced cup like the one from 2005 or 2002, but spicy bean that is worth remembering on its own right. On the dark end there are dry syrupy/caramely/chocolately flavors with a hint of tobacco. Rush the roast from 1st to 2nd on your way to darkness and the dry tobacco asserts itself with a vengeance.

All my blends are done at the time a single portion of coffee is about to go to the grinder, which gives me the option to fine tune the cup depending on the time of day (darker/drier in the morning, lighter more nuanced in the afternoon). Sometimes I roast the harrar for caramel, sometimes for tobacco, and sometimes light. On a lucky day that I happened to have all three at the same time, I ended up with a cup that was amazingly delightful and simply impossible to accomplish in any other way. It was about 50% City+, 35% Vienna for caramel, and 15% Vienna for tobacco. This was not by any stretch of the imagination a balanced cup but on the French press and as an Americano, it was quite memorable.

And then there is my lazy inbreeding approach to most of my single bean Tarrazu; City+, dump on the colander without stirring, and let the center cook itself. Don't know how this would play out for espresso, but on a press and the chemex it puts a little back bone on an otherwise too mild mannered cup.

[Rainman]

My melange is your uneven roast.
Martin

I hear ya. My wife let out the dogs (two misbehaving heelers) while I was beginning the drying phase of some Peru La Florida Chanchamayo- not too terribly difficult of a bean to roast evenly, but while tending to the dogs... 1st crack must've lasted 3 minutes, and 2nd came 30 seconds later (maybe even overlapped 1st). Frustrating. They (dogs) do that again, they're going onto the barbeque tomorrow! Nothing like roasting one bean, and getting a blend all at once

Ray